Dream girl

Jennifer Hudson was the only choice to sing Memory in the new film version of Cats. She talks to Emma Brockes about lucky breaks, her 26 siblings, her shock phone call from Aretha Franklin – and the family tragedy that haunts her.

- Emma Brockes

Jennifer Hudson is sitting in a hotel library in midtown Manhattan dressed in a black beanie and dark shades, a mildly eccentric disguise she removes to reveal a cheerful demeanour. It is 15 years since the singer’s first appearance on American Idol, and she has grown accustomed, through the merciless drive of publicity, to saying nothing, very pleasantly and at length. In the first half of our interview, she is bright and polished. During the second half of our conversation – I can’t tell exactly when the transition occurs, but it’s somewhere around the time the subject of her pets comes up – she is funny and relaxed and a different presence altogether.

The 38-year-old has won an Oscar, a Bafta and a Golden Globe (all for Dreamgirls), and two Grammys – one for her debut album, Jennifer Hudson, and the other for her work on the soundtrack to the stage production of The Color Purple – and is so famous she has to cover her face when crossing a hotel lobby. But when she lets loose, she is pure joy.

In Tom Hooper’s version of Cats, Jennifer is at the heart of the film, bellowing her little heart out as Grizabella, the shabby outcast cat who stops the show with her rendition of Memory. She stars alongside a cast that reminds you of the kind of dream you have when you’ve eaten too much cheese before bed: Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson and Idris Elba, all-dancing around with digitised facial prosthetics against a not-to-scale, old-timey London.

So how do you play a cat?